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It and the Changing Social Division of Labor

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Submitted By ALicew19
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IT and the Changing Social Division of Labor:
The Case of Electronics Contract Manufacturing[1]GLOBAL PRODUCTION AND THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOR IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET

Boy Lüthje

Institute of Social Research
University of Frankfurt
Senckenberganlage 26
D-60325 Frankfurt/M
Germany
Telephone: 069/756183-30, -43
Fax: 069/747709
E-Mail: luethje@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Draft paper for conference Transforming Enterprise
Department of Commerce Auditorium
Washington, D.C., January 27-28, 2003

Draft! Comments and suggestions welcome, but please do not quote!
The impact of information technology on business, economy and society cannot be examined without an analysis of the profound changes in the productive structure of global capitalism. In the electronics industry, a new model of outsourced manufacturing has emerged as the centrepiece of globalized production networks: Contract Manufacturing (CM) or Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS). This form of network-based mass production is closely linked to the disintegration of the value chain and the emergence of the “Wintelist” (Borrus and Zysman 1997) model of competition and the rise of “fabless” product design companies in key sectors of the IT industry. In contrast to the general perception of the “informational economy” (Carnoy et al 1993, Castells 1996) as service- or science-based, the rise of the CM-model demonstrates that manufacturing still matters in the "new economy" (Cohen and Zysman 1987). This development also highlights the interaction of new information networks with the restructuring of production, work, and the global division of labor in technologically advanced industries.

In this paper, we want to take a closer look at the restructuring of production and commodity chains in the assembly of IT-hardware (such as computers, internet switching and telecommunications

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